


No Less Human

by alizarin_nyc



Category: Inspector Lewis
Genre: First Time, M/M, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:45:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alizarin_nyc/pseuds/alizarin_nyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspector Lewis finds himself distracted on a case by the fact that Hathaway seems distracted - by a very handsome suspect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Less Human

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mcicioni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcicioni/gifts).



Hathaway's head fell back in a familiar pose of exhaustion, irritation, resignation. Lewis wrinkled his forehead in concentration as he swallowed his beer.

"Why should it matter," Lewis said once he'd washed down the dregs of the day. "We got the right one in the end."

Hathaway tipped his glass back and poured the rest of his drink straight down. He raised his hand for another. "No, it doesn't matter. Still, I feel like apologizing."

"But we can't. It's all in a day's work, isn't it? Run rampant over other people's lives, walk away, move on to the next case."

"So it doesn't matter." Hathaway looked at Lewis directly, willfully obtuse to the sarcasm. "Officially, it's over."

"Yes. Officially, he's his own man." Lewis met Hathaway's gaze and searched it for whatever it was the other man was trying to ask. "No connection to us, not any longer."

Simon Martnett was the man in question, a key figure in their investigation, an investigation that unfolded over the course of several very long, very exhausting days. Lewis brushed the arm of his suit absently. He was still covered in dust and the odd leaf. And he wasn't yet ready to forgive the man for pulling a gun on Hathaway.

He wasn't yet ready either, to forgive Simon Martnett for causing _that look_ on Hathaway's face the first day they'd met. It was recognition, maybe, one type of person recognizing another, but also it was down to the effect of Simon's beauty, charisma and a rare openness that was foreign to Lewis. The admiration he'd seen on Hathaway's face was telling, too. For a man who showed next to nothing in his expressions, however much Lewis had learned to read them, Hathaway had turned into an open book for a complete stranger.

And that was more troubling than was absolutely reasonable. Lewis had long since learned his lesson on that score. Hathaway's business was none of his. That had more recently been made clearer by the Fiona McKendrick business. And yet he couldn't help his prurient curiosity – his undeniable _interest_ in the subject matter.

Lewis rubbed his finger along the side of his glass. He wasn't going to ask any more questions. He stared resolutely at the iced purple of Hathaway's tie.

"So. Are you going to apologize to him?" Dammit, he asked anyway, despite his best intentions. This was none of his business, and dangerously close to _really_ none of his business.

"Would that be improper?" Hathaway looked almost as if he cared about Lewis' answer. "Probably would. I won't. He might still be armed." The smile on Hathaway's face was charming, maddening.

"Least of your worries," Lewis mumbled. Hathaway shrugged away the cryptic comment and received his beer from the waitress graciously.

"Another?" he asked Lewis.

"Might as well. Think I actually deserve it," Lewis replied. "If it will make you feel better, go on and pay the lad a visit. Say your peace." Lewis couldn't believe he was pushing Hathaway yet again in the direction he thought the other man most wanted to go, without really having any evidence that it was the case. The long face on his Sergeant the day after he'd spent the night with Fiona, courtesy of Lewis' interference, was not one that Lewis was likely to forget. And if he'd tried to forget, Hobson would remind him anyway. He didn't know when he had started caring about Hathaway's happiness, but it had been recently, and it was a most unwelcome responsibility.

"Is that what you'd do if you were in my place?" Hathaway asked.

"I'm not the apologetic type," Lewis said, hoping that would be understood as 'I'm not the type to go mooning over wronged suspects, no matter how badly they've been treated by our investigative tactics.' No matter how attractive, either, although that was debatable.

"No," Hathaway said sourly. "You're not the type. You just ask your questions, sit back and listen, take it all in, but never give anything away."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Lewis asked, tense and on his guard suddenly. It wasn't like Hathaway to be sharp with him over drinks. "Are we even talking about Simon Martnett anymore?"

"We're talking about whether or not you give a damn about people."

"You know I do, that's ridiculous."

"Sorry, sorry, I just feel a bit, well, out of sorts. He really caught me off guard." Hathaway looked off into the distance. "_The outcasts always mourn._"

"Sorry?"

"Oscar Wilde."

"You really should have had that lump on your head looked at."

"It's nothing. And I hate how they fuss over you at hospitals." Hathaway was back to bantering, leaning back and folding his fingers over each other.

"That I understand."

Lewis was ready for his next beer, which came just as he realized it was so desperately needed. He quaffed a full quarter before setting the moist base on the napkin. This was the strangest conversation he had had in a long line of strange conversations with Hathaway.

Most suspects were complicated, but few were as unsettling as Simon. It hadn't helped that they'd been dragged out to the middle of nowhere at 6 a.m. on a Monday morning to look at a body that was in the worst possible shape. Drowning victims who'd floated for a while never looked human, but like something from the depths of a great, dark sea of myth and legend, something hellish and foul. Lewis would rather there be blood, and lots of it, rather than a bloodless, bloated corpse that would take days to analyze, and which would inevitably, yield so little evidence.

Who had drowned MaryAnn Bell in the Cherwell? Lewis was keen to find out, and quickly. He realized fairly early on that MaryAnn had been a sort of call girl, a casual but classy one, the sort of girl that moonlighted in between her studies at Oxford as an escort for young men who were shy and unsteady or who wanted to make a suitable impression on their peers.

There was no end of suspects. Hobson had confirmed consensual sex between Miss Bell and someone. Several suspicious bruises around Miss Bell's wrists and throat were also described dryly by Hobson, contradicting the former observation.

If Miss Bell was killed for her line of part-time work, then other girls might be in danger. And it didn't help that Miss Bell's mother was a very pretty, petite woman with big blue eyes who cried in Lewis' arms and begged him to find her daughter's killer.

Once again, Lewis was motivated by more than just the facts. He threw everything he had at Simon Martnett. But their first trip to Simon's well-appointed flat proved that it was going to be difficult. Simon was slippery, though well-meaning; he immediately put Lewis and Hathaway at ease. Yes, he had certainly slept with Miss Bell at the weekend, but hadn't seen her since Saturday afternoon when they parted company. He seemed genuinely shocked that she was occasionally employed as an escort, and he flat out refused to believe she was some sort of tawdry prostitute, a suggestion which Lewis insisted on poking him with.

"Not her, if you knew her, you would be ashamed to suggest such a thing," Simon said, drawing himself up to his full height and defending the lady's honor with emphasis. "Not her. She was enterprising, beautiful and spirited. Not my type, but … well. She was nice, she was good to me." He paused. "It turned out to be okay, in the end." He flushed a deep crimson color that only served to enhance his tan against a bright blue shirt and bring out the green in his hazel eyes. He leaned back in a black leather chair, legs crossed. His face was that of a movie star's, Lewis thought.

Hathaway was completely smitten, Lewis could tell. And after the last bit of conversation, it seemed that perhaps the man wasn't usually with women. His voice took on a slightly feminine lilt as he talked and he stared openly at Hathaway. A playboy and a player, Lewis thought. They left the flat then, but from the first, Lewis was ready to peg him as the killer.

"A gay man hooks up with a woman, realizes he'll never be straight and this one night stand has failed to cure him, like his friends have assured him it will," Lewis said, tossing around theories with Hathaway in the car. "She's clingy, she's in love, who wouldn't be with a man like him, good-looking and sexually unavailable. She pushes too far, and _wham_. He snaps, there's a tussle and she ends up in the river."

"Figured it all out, have you?" Hathaway asked, his voice less than encouraging. When he spotted Lewis later, sitting at his desk and chewing ferociously on his lower lip, he said, "That look says it all."

"Still a lot of people to interview, Sergeant, I wouldn't give up just yet."

"Let's get going then," he replied and long-legged it out the door without his customary politeness.

Friends confirmed that Simon Martnett was having personal troubles, trying to understand whether or not he was gay, how he fit in with his peers, and so forth. His mates said they thought it was a phase, one he'd grow out of, once he'd had enough "pussy." Lewis flinched at the word, and then later flinched again when they said he wasn't the sort who was ever going to really be into "cock," even if he did have questions about his sexuality.

Lewis wondered idly about the thread of homosexuality that ran through many aspects of Oxford life. The more steeped in traditionalism the place was, the harder it was to change with the times.

On the suggestion of Simon's friends, they interviewed a sad blond boy who twisted his hands in his t-shirt as he described numerous encounters with Simon that usually ended in sex and then an angry outburst. Simon had hit him, he confessed, more than once. "He said he liked it rough, but I think it was just his way of denying he _wanted_ to be gentle," John Grant had said. Lewis' gut churned at the idea. Hathaway's face remained impassive.

"How did we get stuck with this case?" Lewis asked, later.

"There was a homicide, in case you've forgotten," Hathaway said. "I think we need to look at the girl's friends and family more closely."

"When you're right, you're right. We've got a flatmate, an aunt in town and a few professors. We'll not get to it all today, but first thing in the morning, we need to be back at several of those locations along the river to see if anyone saw anything remotely useful."

Their second day yielded less than the first, but by the third day they were back to Simon Martnett. And after the debacle in his flat, and a few other bumps along the way, they had managed to tie the case up, even if it was left of center and not quite right, but it was over and done with and Lewis was going to try now, with the help of a little more booze, to put it behind him.

The streets were empty, dark and damp. They left the pub in a flurry of jackets and discarded ties, crumpled bills and receipts. They shuffled a bit, but not enough. Lewis' place was closer and he offered a nightcap to smooth the ruffled feathers of the evening, which was accepted as soon as the words left his mouth. Hathaway mumbled something about leaving his car overnight and taking a taxi. Lewis drove carefully but parked haphazardly. No one met them on the way to his flat, a short walk from the car in the orange glow of streetlights, with the only sound the slap of leather shoes on pavement and the whisper of Hathaway's lighter.

"I think I drank too much," Hathaway said.

"You're still walking," Lewis replied.

"I don't have a gun pressed to my head every day."

"Thank God for that." Lewis replayed the desperation, the way Simon had turned from a man into a scared boy, grabbing a gun as if he were in a Hollywood film and pushing it into Hathaway's neck, forcing him to his knees and threatening to shoot. They were there to arrest him. And Martnett had other ideas.

"I was frightened, too, you know," Lewis said.

"Thanks, but that's not necessary."

"He was just confused. About a lot of things." Lewis remembered how the blond boy came out of the bedroom, wearing only his underwear, tears streaked wet down his face, begging Simon not to do it. Confessed then and there to killing the girl in a jealous rage.

When Simon turned the gun on himself, his face was white with horror and shame. Hathaway was quick to defuse the situation, knocking the gun aside and then knocking out Simon Martnett.

"It's not just confusion. It's the way others made him feel about himself," Hathaway said. "As if he had a reason to hate himself – a man like that, who had so much to offer – no one could see past the sexual predilections."

"Which young man are you talking about, Simon or John?" _Or yourself?_ Lewis thought. "You're cleverer than that, surely. They're a couple of no-accounts, they should be studying, not running around in their underpants."

Hathaway threw the cigarette aside, as if it was a skipping stone, scattering embers across the asphalt, and in nearly the same moment, he had turned on Lewis and shoved him hard in the chest. "You make me so angry sometimes, Robbie," he said.

"Hey," Lewis put up a warning hand, he didn't take kindly to physical violence, even if it was well-meant. "Hey." Because Hathaway was in his space, breathing hard and his hands were up, ready for another shove. This time they wound themselves in Lewis' lapels and Lewis found himself backed up against a hard stone wall.

"What is it? What is it exactly that bothers you so much about me? That I might be gay? Do I disgust you with my ambiguities too?"

"Is that what you think? That's not what you think." Lewis' fingers brushed back against the rough stone, the tactile feel of _Oxford_ beneath his hands. It was the only thing keeping him from thinking of all this as a strange dream. He was on the cusp of being just as angry as Hathaway; who did he think he was talking to?

"I don't know what to think." Hathaway's hands tightened and didn't let go. He panted hard in Lewis' face. "Robbie…"

Hathaway kissed him. He kissed him roughly on the mouth, a low grunt coming from the back of his throat, a concession maybe, or some sort of defiance. Lewis was pinned but he wasn't helpless. He wasn't stupid either. He would have never, ever, considered _this_ with Hathaway. There had been nothing there before, nothing to act upon, nothing to say. Unless he'd been blind to it, which was a possibility.

But this was a different story – to deny himself this, to _not act_ would have been criminal. And he was no criminal. He kissed Hathaway back, surprise making him a little clumsy, and as Hathaway took the kiss to more desperate heights, Lewis stayed with him, reached up to him, cocked his head to the side to take him in closer, and opened his mouth, to give everything he could.

"Your flat," Hathaway prompted, finally.

They were there almost instantaneously, Lewis' head spinning with alcohol and a case of nerves he hadn't felt since he was eighteen, Hathaway's fingers gripping his coat as if Lewis might bolt down the nearest alley if he wasn't tethered. He dropped his keys, twice, and once they were inside, he headed straight for the booze cabinet.

"This is madness," he said.

Hathaway's eyebrow quirked, as did his mouth. "You're always surprised when anyone is attracted to you," he said.

"That's true, perhaps, but you? I wouldn't have thought. I mean, I wondered, 'course. All that business with your school friends." Lewis sighed. "I'm twice your age, and all."

"And here I thought it would be that we worked together that would get your knickers in a twist."

"I'm hoping it doesn't even need to be said that this stays between us."

"Strictly off-hours, _sir_."

"Off hours? You're trying to tell me… no, no, a bit of an indiscretion, that's all this is." Lewis had poured himself something, on a second look it turned out to be Scotch. He waved the bottle at Hathaway, who grabbed it from his hand and set it aside.

"No," Hathaway said. "Not indiscretion. That might have happened yesterday. Remember when I took a look around Simon's flat? When you were questioning his housemate?" Lewis nodded. "Simon propositioned me. Got my trousers open, even."

"Ah?" Lewis was shocked by the confession, and if Hathaway was trying to provoke a little jealousy, it was working. "Highly unprofessional of you."

"I stopped him. But it was too late. The thought process had already begun."

"Ah, the thought process."

"Thoughts that haven't, until lately, concerned you."

"Have a drink, man, you're making me jumpy," Lewis said. He waved the bottle at Hathaway again, who instead of taking it, opened Lewis' refrigerator and pulled out a beer. Lewis wordlessly handed him an opener. He couldn't help but watch the long line of Hathaway's throat as he drank. When he'd had enough, he set the bottle on the counter and moved toward Lewis, still standing in the tiny kitchen. He looked tired, washed out in the low light, and he uncharacteristically wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"In truth, I am a little tired of thinking. Oxford weighs on one, wouldn't you agree?"

"You know I would. But I need to know why this… this gesture. Tell me what's going on, James. It's a little odd to involve me in it, I'm not one for games."

Lewis found himself once again backed up against a hard place with James looming over him. James set his hands on either side of him, leaning against the counter and Lewis felt the bulb of a drawer knob pressing into his bum. Lewis inserted his Scotch glass against Hathaway's chest, it was all that was between them.

"Trust me, Robbie, this is not a game, however much I wish it was. Push me away, if you must, I'm prepared for that, but this is what I've wanted for a while."

Up to him, then. Lewis had all the facts, not as much missing as there had been earlier in the day. He'd been ready to arrest Simon Martnett, then he'd placed John Grant under arrest, and he had been so distracted by Hathaway that he'd failed to think through everything he needed to. It was important to think through things now, to not be distracted by the nearness of him, and the way his head bowed in anticipation of what Lewis would do next.

John Grant had shoved Lewis into the bushes outside the flat on his way to the squad car, and then he ran like the wind, outstripping Hathaway who managed a brief but useless sprint before coming back to pull Lewis out of the greenery.

It didn't matter, in the end, who'd resisted arrest, or who'd been sleeping with whom. John Grant had wanted to protect Simon, and Simon, the obvious choice of suspect, hadn't harmed Mary Ann Bell, who had only slept with him because she'd been compensated for it. Simon's friends had set it up, and no one would cop to it because they thought their plan had gone awry and that Simon had snapped and killed her.

Simon's best mate, a fellow named Alex Hardy, had gone after Mary Ann after Simon rang him to confess it hadn't worked, that he'd had sex with a spectacular woman and wanted to be with John anyway. He begged Alex to be discreet. Instead, Alex got drunk, sought out Mary Ann and began blaming her for failing to convince his friend of the merits of the straight and narrow.

"I'm going to surmise that she accused him of being in love with Simon," Lewis had told Hathaway later, trying to pick garden dirt out of his fingernails. "Two types of DNA from Mary Ann Bell, according to Hobson and the lab, so we can assume that there was sex with Alex, most likely unwelcome and less lucrative than her encounter with Simon. But Alex had something to prove, and might have been just angry enough at himself and at Simon, to take it out on her."

"Is everyone in love with Simon? All of your theories have someone in love with Simon."

"Yeah, well, there you are," Lewis had admitted reluctantly. And the thought of James with his trousers open, and Simon's slim, tanned hands down the front… Lewis couldn't think about that now, not with James in front of him, penning him in with his arms, waiting for an embrace or a shove.

In the interview room, Alex had lied smoothly, attempting to cast doubt on his involvement, claiming to have left Mary Ann in her room. There was enough evidence to nail him, however, and Lewis had no doubts that this time, they had their man. Alex swore with real fury at the suggestion of having killed Mary Ann because of some misguided impulses toward his best mate, enough to prove to Lewis that he had been correct in assuming that Alex was yet another man unable to define his sexuality and trapped in an inability to admit certain things to himself.

"Enough thinking," Lewis said to him. He moved the Scotch to the side, sloshing a bit on his hand. He had never had to shy away from his attraction to anyone before, whether or not he could act on it. This was a one-time offer, most like, and he wasn't getting any younger. Why question what James saw in him, plenty of women had seen it too.

"Way too much bloody thinking in this town," he said, and pulled James' head down toward his.

James made a sound, this time it sounded like a cross between a laugh and a sob, probably caused by surprise. He couldn't have been more surprised than Lewis about the whole thing, but age won out this time, because Lewis knew how to handle himself in these situations. He cupped James' head and walked him back toward his couch, folding them both down onto it. One thing he wasn't about to do was allow James to bend him back over his own kitchen counter and suffer for it the rest of the week. He pulled back long enough to see a sort of dazed consternation on James' face, the familiar frown, vulnerable and anxious.

"No thinking," he warned.

"Wouldn't dream of it," James said, and pulled Lewis so they were firmly pressed against each other, shedding their shoes and smelling of Scotch.

There was nothing more to say.


End file.
